Osprey on Antipoison Creek

Posted on July 8, 2016 Updated on July 8, 2016

By Gary Greenwood

This past Saturday was a beautiful summer day on Antipoison Creek.  As we were sitting outside enjoying the view and breeze, we would occasionally hear a loud splash just off the shore.  We would look up just in time to see the osprey surface and try to gain altitude with a fresh-caught fish in his talons.  We named him Sam.

There is an osprey nest on a pole not too far from our shore, close to the oyster farm.  It’s on a piling, not as high above the water as it should be, but the osprey population is increasing, so they use any suitable platform they can find.  Last year it was just a piece of plywood, and in a storm the nest was at risk of blowing away.  So in late March my neighbor Glenn and I added some nice 6-inch walls around the edge of the plywood.  We had no sooner gotten back to shore than we saw two osprey pairs checking it out.  Sam and Louise won out, and proceeded to build a nice nest.

After Sam caught the fish, we could see Louise through the telescope, chattering away.  Soon Sam came along with the fish, and two young chicks stuck their heads up for dinner.  The feathers are all dark grey, and the necks are long.  Louise would pick a piece of meat off the fish and feed it to the chicks.  They aren’t ready to fly, but they do a good job eating and sleeping.
I didn’t get any good pictures on Saturday, so the next day, even though it was rainy, I went over and got a nice picture of a very wet Louise watching over her chicks.  Unfortunately, the chicks weren’t sticking their heads up unless there was a fish, so you can’t see them in the picture.